by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

by Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports

When Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel was still in the process of proving himself to this team that would eventually join the NBA elite, the player whose opinion may have mattered most wasn't sure what to think.

Veteran forward David West had seen this situation before, this assistant-coach-promoted-to-head coach-by-way-of-a-firing routine that can make for the trickiest of transitions. He wasn't doubting Vogel, per se, but he was watching him with a discerning eye during what was Vogel's first full season at the helm. Would he be too soft on young players like Roy Hibbert, Paul George and Danny Granger who he'd helped raise from NBA infancy, and would he truly understand the need for a different tone and a different tact as the leader of this promising group?

West's free agent signing the previous summer was the strongest sign yet that the Pacers wanted to be serious contenders, but they needed a coach who could meet this moment if this plan was going pay off. Yet after Feb. 14, 2012, West would never worry about Vogel again.

There were no Valentine's Day love letters inside the Pacers locker room that night, not with the way they'd let the Miami Heat outscore them 68-39 in the first half on their Bankers Life Fieldhouse floor. There was the then-38-year-old Vogel at center stage, and a rant to remember that made West believe this was the right man for their mission.

"Within the locker room, we didn't have the belief that we could compete at that level," West, now 33, said recently. "But he did. So he came in at halftime, I remember, and he went Andrew Dice Clay on us. They were running over us, and he just lost it, just Andrew Dice Clay-ed it up."

The R-rated message was simple: you're better than this, and now it's time to show it. The Pacers did just that, outscoring the Heat 51-37 in the second half and holding them to 15 fourth-quarter points.

"He said, 'We can compete with them at every position, but we've just got to know it," West continued. "We got beat, but we responded. We played better in the second half. I knew then â?? when he had that moment â?? that his belief in this group and in some of the younger guys who he had been around as an assistant, was strong. And we've just grown from that moment on."

Take a long look at Vogel's resume, and you won't see anything extraordinarily unique about how he became the captain of this Pacers ship and, Sunday at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, the head coach of the East's All-Star team.

He is, like many head coaches, the sort of former player (Division III Juniata College in Pennsylvania) who wasn't the star of his teams growing up and thus had to outwork his peers for every opportunity. He spent his formative years in the NBA like many others have, as a video coordinator (Boston Celtics), assistant coach (Celtics, Pacers), and advance scout (Los Angeles Lakers, Washington Wizards) who made the most of his opportunities at every step along the way (in his case the 15 years leading up to his Jan. 2011 promotion following the firing of Jim O'Brien).

But ask his players what makes him different, what makes him worthy of Coach of the Year consideration and such a pivotal part of their incredible evolution, and they'll debrief you on the power of belief in ways typically reserved for the evangelical types. He is, they say, a master of positive reinforcement, a basketball tactician with a sunny disposition who sees things in them that they may not have seen in themselves.

The ever optimist

The Vogel hug is far more prevalent than the Vogel hammer, so to speak, and it's hard to argue with the results. In this environment in which players have improved at a remarkable rate and Indiana finds itself with pole position over the Heat heading down the second-half stretch, the Pacers have progressed every year under Vogel.

"I've always been a big dreamer," said Vogel, who is 151-85 since taking over and has seen his team eliminated in the first round (2010-11 to the Chicago Bulls), Eastern Conference Semifinals (Miami) and Eastern Conference Finals (Miami again). "I've always bought into the inspirational words and the inspirational stories in sports and in life in general. I've always been just extremely drawn to that and I try to carry that over to here, because look: belief and confidence are extraordinarily powerful. If you can find a way to build guys up and make them believe in themselves, to believe that they're capable of doing things greater than maybe they expected that they could, then you can do special things."

Vogel has made believers out of people before, never moreso than in his now-infamous David Letterman appearance in which, as part of the late night host's Stupid Human Tricks segment, a then-13-year-old Vogel spun a basketball on the end of a toothbrush while simultaneously brushing his teeth. Impressive though it was, this trick he's pulling off in adulthood has taken far more practice to perfect.

As Vogel has said so many times before, he credits Rick Pitino with expanding on his basketball belief system that is now so central to this four-year long Pacers push. He was a fly on Pitino's decorated wall at Kentucky some 20 years ago, a student manager from Wildwood Crest, New Jersey who used to give him rides to and from inspirational speaking engagements and made the most of all those lessons learned in between.

O'Brien, who was on Pitino's staff at the time, helped Vogel get his first big break into the big-time basketball world. Pitino eventually followed suit, hiring Vogel as his video coordinator with the Celtics when his second NBA stint began in 1997. All along the way, Vogel preferred to empower players by building them up rather than breaking them down.

"It's that optimism, which I think is not prevalent enough amongst professional coaches (that helps Vogel's cause)," West said. "I've been in situations where there is no positive energy in the locker room. But he won't allow that in the culture that we have here. He won't allow that to be a part of this locker room, and that's on him. It's the belief that Roy can be a dominant center, Paul can be an elite wing in this league, his belief in (fourth-year guard) Lance (Stephenson) has grown â?? or he has grown that belief in Lance, I should say.

"It's what he sees in you, just that belief. And sometimes that's all these guys need."

The right push

One of those guys has been Hibbert, who went from playing just 14.4 minutes per game in his rookie season to becoming a two-time All-Star and the frontrunner for this season's Defensive Player of the Year award.

"He does a good job of keeping us focused, and he's always positive," Hibbert said. "He's a very, very positive guy. He wants us to believe in everything and what we're doing and inspires hope and belief, so I've learned a lot."

As has George, who has gone from being a reserve as a rookie to a capable starter in his second season to the league's Most Improved Player last season to an MVP candidate in the latest campaign.

"To be honest, he should be hands down Coach of the year with what he did with us," George said. "A lot of coaches are just blessed with guys coming to their team and being blessed with their talents off that. But what coach Vogel did is he really highlighted every player's strengths into the offense and allowed us to just play our game and play at our tempo and gave us that freedom to be us. He has put a lot of work into us, put a lot of time into us. He really just changed the whole culture of this locker room. He takes most of the credit of why we're so good this year."

Said Vogel, who has had the added challenge this season of leading without former associate head coach Brian Shaw after he took the Denver Nuggets head coaching job in the summer: "(I want) to have a culture of positive energy and enthusiasm, and building confidence in every opportunity. Whether it's a small win here or a comeback, or even if we lose in a situation or one guy's individual performance. Whatever happens, if there's an opportunity to strengthen our belief and confidence, we're looking for those. Individually, building confidence in the individual and then build confidence in the group about what they can accomplish."

That's what happened on Feb. 14 2012. And it's been happening ever since.

"It was good for this group, and he's had other moments like that," West said. "(Vogel) had a couple of those last year, where his belief was so strong in our ability to be one of the elite teams that when he doesn't see us responding the right way, he lets us know."